New York has about 20.0 million residents. Registered nurses average $113,440 a year, seventh among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
New York is unusual in licensing nurses through its education system rather than a health department. The State Education Department's Office of the Professions issues registered nurse, licensed practical nurse and nurse practitioner licenses, advised by the State Board for Nursing. The office is in the Education Building on Washington Avenue in Albany, telephone (518) 474-3817. Rules and applications are at op.nysed.gov.
New York is not in the Nurse Licensure Compact, though bills have been introduced. A multistate license carries no authority here, a New York license does not travel, and nurses moving in apply by endorsement.
The effect on the commuting workforce is large. New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Vermont are all compact members, and a nurse crossing into a New York hospital from any of them needs a separate New York license. Massachusetts is the only neighbor in the same position as New York.
New York also requires nurses to finish a bachelor's degree in nursing within ten years of first licensure. The 2017 law, usually called BSN in 10, applies to nurses licensed from 2019, and New York is the only state with a requirement of this kind. Associate degree graduates can still be licensed and can practice; they simply have to complete the degree inside the window. See entry into practice and the BSN requirement.
Staffing law
New York is one of four states with mandated nurse to patient ratios, and its version is the narrowest. A 2021 law directed the state to set ratios for intensive and critical care units, effective from 2023. Outside those units there are no fixed numbers.
Instead, the same 2021 legislation requires every general hospital to run a clinical staffing committee, half of its members frontline nurses and other caregivers, which writes an annual staffing plan for each unit and shift and files it with the state. The committee model is more flexible than a statutory maximum and considerably weaker, because a committee can be outvoted or ignored in a way a fixed number cannot. See nurse staffing and patient outcomes.
A companion law sets a floor of 3.5 hours of direct care per resident per day in nursing homes, with fixed shares of that time coming from certified nursing assistants and from licensed nurses. See nursing home staffing requirements.
Nurse practitioner practice
New York is a full practice state. A 2022 change to the Nurse Practitioner Modernization Act removed the written practice agreement requirement for nurse practitioners with more than 3,600 hours of qualifying experience. That provision was due to expire on July 1, 2026, and in May 2026 it was extended to July 1, 2030. Nurse practitioners below the hours threshold still work under a collaborative relationship with a physician. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing history
The Bellevue Hospital training school in Manhattan, opened in 1873, was the first of three American schools founded that year on Florence Nightingale's model. Linda Richards, the first professionally trained American nurse, came to Bellevue as night superintendent after graduating in Boston in 1873, and it was there that she worked out the individual patient record system that American and British hospitals later took up. Richards was born in West Potsdam, in the north of the state. See history of nursing.
Notable nurses
Edith Shain was born in Tarrytown, trained at New York University and was working as a psychiatric nurse in Manhattan on V-J Day in 1945, when she went down to Times Square to celebrate. She spent the rest of her life known as the nurse in Eisenstaedt's photograph of the sailor's kiss, a claim later research has largely overturned. The blues singer Alberta Hunter spent more than twenty years as a licensed practical nurse at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, telling almost nobody at work about her earlier career.
Nursing education
Columbia University School of Nursing and the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing are the largest private research programs. The Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, part of the City University of New York and a direct descendant of the 1873 Bellevue school, together with the rest of the CUNY and SUNY systems, trains a very large share of the state's nurses, including through associate degree programs that feed the BSN in 10 requirement. The University of Rochester and Binghamton's Decker College carry substantial upstate programs.
New York also licenses more internationally educated nurses than almost any other state, and the endorsement route they take is the same one that applies to any nurse arriving from outside New York.
Pay and workforce
New York City holds one of the largest concentrations of hospital nursing anywhere: NewYork-Presbyterian, Northwell Health, Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, Montefiore and the eleven public hospitals of NYC Health and Hospitals. Long Island, Westchester, the Hudson Valley, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo carry substantial markets of their own, while the North Country and the Southern Tier are rural, with small community hospitals and critical access hospitals.
Pay is high in the city and considerably lower upstate. New York's nurses are also among the most heavily unionized in the country, and the January 2023 strike at two New York City hospitals was one of the largest in recent American nursing. See nurse strikes and bargaining and registered nurse pay.
Related
- Nurse staffing and patient outcomes
- Nursing home staffing requirements
- Entry into practice and the BSN requirement
- Licensure by endorsement
- Nursing by state
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates for July 1, 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), May 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- New York State Education Department, Office of the Professions, registered professional nursing. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- New York Public Health Law article 28, clinical staffing committees, critical care staffing ratios and nursing home minimum direct care hours (2021). Accessed September 8, 2026.
- New York Nurse Practitioner Modernization Act and the 2026 extension of its sunset to July 1, 2030. Accessed September 8, 2026.